


Julie's Story (2)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [166]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Autobiographical Elements, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Gen, Guilt, Love, POV Female Character, Parental Relationships, Psi Corps, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23305360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Sometimes people ask telepaths for reallystrangefavors.(Julie's first story ishere, although these are stand-alone.)The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!
Relationships: Family Relationships
Series: Behind the Gloves [166]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/677654
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Julie's Story (2)

**Author's Note:**

> New to _Behind the Gloves_? What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

2236\. New York City.

Eight years later, and Julie is still with Centimia. Five days a week, she still goes to work at eight o'clock in the morning, dressed meticulously in color-block suits perfectly ironed, carefully coordinated to match her shirt, shoes, stockings, and accessories - and sits all day in business meetings like very pretty potted plant.

Every day, as she enters the building, she catches the eye of one of the security guards, a scruffy man in his forties. He tells her his name is Red. He always wishes her good morning and waves, with a bit of small talk, nothing threatening. Sometimes, when she leaves for lunch, she brings him back a coffee, and he pays her a couple credits back. They never talk about their personal lives.

One day, as she leaves work, he has predicament in his eyes. He says there's something he'd like to ask her about... he's got an issue... and if she doesn't mind, could they maybe get coffee at some point, to talk it over?

"All right," she tells him, and they agree to meet in a few days after he gets off his shift.

The coffee shop is warm, and the air is pungent. They sit at a small table far in the back corner. He doesn't want to be overheard, and she doesn't want to be seen. She always wonders if restaurants lose patrons if there's a telepath visible from the street.

He sips his coffee, no sugar, no cream. He tells her he's divorced, but she doesn't get the feeling he's hitting on her. He's got a four-year-old son, he tells her, and he sees the boy on weekends. He and his ex are still on bad terms, but they stick to the childcare arrangement, and so far, they've made it work.

She nods, still wondering what this has to do with her. Did he need a therapist? Some normals would expect telepaths to be their informal therapists, whether they had any training in it or not. There were many creative interpretations of the saying, "we're everywhere for your convenience."

After ten minutes, he stops. "Do you have kids?"

"One. A boy, almost six years old. He's at school."

"Oh, OK, well... look, I don't know how to say this, but I don't love my son."

Her eyes widen. "Excuse me?"

He tells her that he's _tried_ , and he knows it's _wrong_ , but whatever he does, he just can't feel love for his son. "I know it's terrible," he admits. "I know this makes me a terrible person. I think I fake it well-enough, but well... I was hoping you could help me."

"Help you how?"

"You know, change how I feel. I've heard you people can do that."

Julie feels a chill in the warm air of the coffee house. "I don't know if even a Psi Cop could do that..." she stammers. "I really have no idea. I don't know anyone at that level. I'm a business telepath, low-level. Maybe it's possible, but I've never asked. I wasn't even raised in the Corps. This doesn't exactly, _come up a lot_ , you know?"

As they talk more, Julie doesn't know whether to pity him or hate him. He wants to feel guilty, but he doesn't. He feels _nothing_.

Her parents used to love her, back in her childhood - but then she developed telepathy and moved to school, and they disappeared from her life. Did they still love her? she wonders. Or had they excised her from their hearts, filling her place with nothing but guilt?

She feels angrier and angrier, a flame raging behind her placid business demeanor. She thinks about her little boy. She can't make Red love his son, but dammit, she can make sure every time he thinks about it, he'll feel _guilty_. Maybe some day he'll be able to change himself. Either way, it's not her problem.

Something changes, but he doesn't realize it yet.

He finishes another mundane story. She tells him again there's nothing more she can do.

He drains the last of the coffee. She leaves hers untouched. He makes a bit more small talk, pays, and they leave.

"Thanks Julie," he says, as he crosses the street to the train station. "I'll see you around!"

She nods. "No problem. See you!"

He enters the station, and she knows she'll never see him again. If they ever cross paths, he'll pretend he doesn't know her.

He'll feel too damn guilty.

*****

That night, she returns to her apartment, alone. It's been almost a year since Caleb left for his cadre, but she hasn't been able to give away his things. She still keeps his crib folded up in the corner, next to his small bed, his blankets, his toys. There is no child's laughter. There are no child's tears. There is nothing but silence in the apartment.

Gloves off, she picks up one of his teddy bears.

Every day she dresses up. Every day she paints her face, slips on her badge, and her gloves. She faces the world as a _telepath_ , a strange, exotic creature divorced from human emotions and relationships, one from a different dimension. She's more alien than aliens.

She doesn't talk about herself, about her private feelings. She pretends that inner person doesn't exist.

 _We all pretend, don't we?_ she asks herself. For all the talk of sacrifice, of the Corps as Mother and Father, she still feels empty inside. She knows that telepath children must be raised together in school, and she can almost talk herself into it intellectually, but it never really works.

 _Her_ baby. _Her_ son. _Her_ flesh and blood. How could he ever belong to someone else - to a political _metaphor?_

That's bad enough - but when she slips on her gloves, she must also pretend to the world she never loved him anyway, that he's irrelevant.

"He's at school."

That's it.

"He's at school. All telepath children are raised at school."

He's not just at school, she knows - they sent him to the Center on _Mars_. All the way to fucking _Mars_. He'll never even remember her.

Normals don't ask her more questions. It's just small talk - "do you have children?" and that's it. And even if they did ask, she would never answer them.

They belonged to the outside world, the world outside the gloves. They wouldn't understand. They wouldn't _want_ to understand. They'd just pity her, or hate the Corps.

She curls up with his teddy bear, and she cries.

**Author's Note:**

> Talia was also born on Earth and went to live at the Center on Mars when she was five, but canon never explains how the Corps determines which children enter their cadres at three, on Earth (like many of the children in Bester's cadre), and who goes to Mars at five (and so on). Maybe Talia was born on Earth but her family moved to Mars when she was little, and that's how she ended up there? Maybe there's a lottery? I decided to go with it this way because it makes for a dramatic story, but it may not be realistic (if Talia's family actually moved to Mars first).
> 
> It looks like the writers said "Mars at five!" in one place and independently said "Geneva at three!" in another place, then said "Talia was born in Europe!" in a third place, all without checking what was said elsewhere, and also forgot to explain that the Corps has to have more than two schools in the whole EA because by the numbers, there are about ten million telepaths.


End file.
